


Weight

by hiiimaugust



Series: Kitty the Cowardly Courier [1]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Alternate Dialogue, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Nipton, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 08:54:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9377546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiiimaugust/pseuds/hiiimaugust
Summary: Kitty stumbles into her hometown a few days after waking up. Things are not going her way.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Excuse me while I break my own heart.

People from Nipton that were not traders tended not to mention they were from Nipton. New Vegas without the sparkling lights and clean water, Kitty's father always called it. The Hastings stayed, though, ran the general store. It was the only life she'd known, before the Mayor started eyeing her for the "motel" staff. She hightailed up to Primm at eighteen. Sometimes, her route took her to the town. She made it a point to never stay overnight. Her parents understood, mostly because she always stopped by to chat. The mayor was not a man one wanted to cross.

When she realized she was approaching town at dusk, she took a deep breath, then coughed. Tire-fire, burnt rubber mixed with flesh, and the general decay of the not-long dead. Her eyes watered.

She came into town slowly. Her straight razor felt like an inadequate weapon against the p. Unfortunately, she used the last of her ammo on the raiders. A bark scorpion's stinger hit her before the gravity of what she saw hit her. The woozy kick of the poison knocked her flat on her ass.

A dog sailed toward her. She tensed. It landed on the scorpion with a sickening crunch.

She closed her eyes, expecting the dog to turn on her next. Instead she made out someone bark out an order in Latin. Legion. _Holy fuck, what are they doing this far from the Colorado?_

A pair of boots crunched on the scorpion next. "Don’t worry, boy. I won’t have you lashed to a cross like your fellow degenerates. Get up." The voice sounded like it was trying to soothe her but failed slightly.

Maybe if she didn't move, they'd just kill her and never discover her gender. She remembered the stripped caravan guard by the NCR correction facility and shuddered. 

A hand, surprisingly gentle, gripped her arm and hauled her to her feet. Her baseball cap fell to the ground. She wanted to scramble for it but the hand didn't move. "Are you slow?" He looked her up and down. His eyes settled on the top of her head. "Oh, you're a girl."

She took a deep breath and coughed again. The smell mixed with the poison made her unbelievably dizzy. The man with his hand on her bicep's eyes focused on the scars on her head. "What do you want from me, sir?" she whispered.

"Bear witness to the fate of Nipton. Memorize every detail. And then? When you move on? I want you to teach everyone the lesson Caesar’s Legion taught here."

"I'll do as you ask." Her voice cracked.

One of the other men made a comment that drained whatever color might have been in her face away. The man holding onto her arm replied with a sharp, "The child has other uses. No one lays a hand on her. Hand me an anti-venom before she dies."

She wanted to pull away. Instead, dog hat was forcibly making her swallow medicine. She coughed but kept it down. "Thank you, sir."

"Good girl. The houses are all empty. Rest and head for the NCR outpost in the morning." He walked her to one of the houses, opened the door, and set her inside. "If you cross the Legion's path again, I do not think the men will be so kind."

She slept horribly. Bark scorpion venom, even with its lethal powers thwarted, had the side affect of wicked nightmares. Everything that she'd witnessed lately turned into a slideshow of horror. She woke, shaking, drenched in sweat, with her mouth coated in bile more than once during the night. Paranoia forced her focus to the door. Surely one of the Legion fucks would decide to go against orders. Still, nothing happened. The venom finished reeking havoc. She left the house ( _Mildred's_ house) as early in the morning as she dared.

The sight that greeted her made her scream. She knew that the legion killed people here but she did not expect one of the crucified men to be her father. "Papa!" she yelled. 

His eyes opened. "Ketty?" His voice was barely audible. "Ketty, you have to get out. It's too late for me."

"Mom?" she asked.

"Decapitation. The only slaves they took were Powder Gangers. Damn, I knew the mayor shouldn't have..." His voice stopped.

"Papa!" No answer. "Papa, no!"

She stood there for almost an hour before she remembered the Legion gave her a task. One of them could be watching her. She ran, as fast as she dared, to the Mojave Outpost. A startled officer spotted her. "What happened to you?"

"Nipton. Legion. Everyone dead," she wheezed. _There's dead people in my lungs._ "I couldn't."

He said something she didn't quite catch. Her head buzzed. She made her way to the bunk house. A few hours rest or a Nuka Cola sounded like a good idea. She sat on one of the barstools but didn't order. _You're in shock,_ some distant part of her mind said.

She spent the rest of the day and the night in the outpost and then made her way back to Nipton. She desperately searched for survivors but all she found were bodies and lottery tickets. Nearly sixty of them, tattered pre-war paper, probably worth no more than currency of the same era. Yet, in other ways, they were priceless. Sixty lives wrapped into a small stack of papers. She considered throwing them on one of the tire fires but changed her mind. Since she couldn't very well dig graves for an entire town, she'd have to settle for memorializing them in paper format.

The little bits of paper barely added weight to her bag. They only felt heavy in her heart.

**Author's Note:**

> There's a glitch in the game where one of the crucified Powder Gangers is a normal Mojave citizen. also I legit got attacked by a bark scorpion the first time I came into Nipton. Honestly, Nipton as a whole freaked me out.


End file.
